The other day i was on irc #reprap and somehow we got onto the subject of steampunk. there were a bunch of ideas thrown around about punking a reprap but it got me thinking about doing a real steampunk reprap.
My design idea's are still in the rudimentary stage but here are the thoughts on it.
using two steam pistons at 90 deg from each other on a connected cam you can make a steam steper with 4 steps per revolution, connecting this to a hypocycloidal gearbox
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3736 with a 100:1 gear ratio makes it a 400 step per revolution steam stepper. by printing the parts in pla and doing lost pla casting of bronze or copper parts I believe i could print the entire printer to include the guide rods or a equivelent design. essentialy printing all the parts for the printer. It would require some post printing/casting machining but i dont believe it would be eccessive.
if i actualy get it built I will probably be testing it with reletivly standard electronics at first but the end desire is to have it print by being controled from either a player piano style reel or with punched or raised copper disks similar to a music box.
of course so far this is just in concept phase but i figured i would throw the idea out there and see if anyone else thought this idea was just too cool to pass up trying.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I've been thinking about doing the same thing, only with solenoids instead of steam pistons. It wouldn't be steampunk, but it would be much more practical to control. I got the idea when I saw some videos of a rotary engine turning with the side cut off so you could see inside.
ReplyDelete